Dueling Demons
by Sasusakunaruable
Summary: Everyone is prone to mental illness, including shinobi. Sakura has just moved in with Naruto and although he is the one with a monster inside of him, it seem she can not shake the voices in her head either. Depression and anxiety can happen to anyone, its how we deal with it that makes us who we are.
1. Chapter 1

Sakura could not tell you the exact date she moved in with Naruto. It had been gradual.

It started when Naruto got his new apartment. He paid a pretty penny in rent each month, but compared to her awful dungeon-like place it seemed like a beautiful escape. It started off with her just spending the night a few times, and being too tired to drive home after sex. Naruto was not entirely faultless either. He would bribe her with cuddles on cold autumn nights and breakfast every morning. Sakura quickly came to realize that everything she lacked in terms of culinary skills, Naruto made up.

One morning she left her toothbrush at his house by accident instead of packing it in her purse before she left for the hospital. The next, she left a pair of her fingerless gloves. Over the next few weeks, the change of clothes she would bring over and leave there had started to accumulate so he gave her a drawer of her own. That drawer grew in to two and then three and soon she had her own dresser.

Eventually, she stopped paying rent at her own place and began chipping in for Naruto's apartment instead. It seemed like a dumb idea to everyone at the time, but to her it just felt natural. Naruto had been her other half ever since they were twelve so it seemed like the right thing to do. That is what she told herself anyway.

Autumn:

Sakura dropped the last box she was carrying onto Naruto's hardwood floor, and lifted an arm to wipe the sweat off her forehead. Behind her, she heard Naruto struggle through the narrow doorframe with her suitcases. She watched him, pondering how such a great ninja could struggle so much with such a simple task, before walking over and taking two of the bags from him.

He smiled peevishly at her. "Thanks Sakura, what would I do without you?" he said through a grin.

"Probably die!" She called out behind her as she walked the bags to the closet he had designated for her. Naruto would not admit it but Sakura had an inkling that the devious man had had her in mind when he had decided on the apartment.

Naruto closed the door behind him and walked over to where Sakura was standing, clearly contemplating how she was fitting all of her clothing into the closet space. Naruto slid an arm around her waist and rested his chin on her shoulder. "This is going to be incredible." he whispered into her ear.

Despite herself, her prior frustration, and her current dissatisfaction with how she believed she would have to organize her closet, Sakura found herself smiling. He always seemed to have that effect on her.

"It is Naruto. It really is." She turned around and nuzzled herself into his neck, inhaling the scent of him. She could not imagine anything being better, safer, and more fulfilling than this.

A few weeks had passed and Naruto and Sakura had settled into a routine. Sakura would wake up first, and go take a shower. Naruto would notice the lack of warmth and disgruntledly pull her pillow to his chest. She would return and wake him up, and they would both go on with their mornings until he left for training and she went to the hospital. They would meet up for lunch if their schedules allowed it and if not, they would meet at home. Naruto would make dinner and Sakura would clean up around the apartment, and they would sit down and talk until one of them gave out from exhaustion first. It was normally Sakura.

Somewhere along the lines, the days began to blur together. It was the same thing every day. Weekends were a little different but their time together was still riddled with the reality that they were two of Konoha's greatest assets and had priorities which came before spending time together. Every once in a while Naruto would leave for a mission, and Sakura found that she didn't even notice until she got home that night and realized that she was on her own for dinner. She would then walk into their bedroom and sit on their bed and lift up his pillow and hold it to her chest. She would inhale the scent that was so distinctly Naruto, and feel around under her own pillow for the note that he had inevitably left. She always felt a pang of guilt as she did this because she knew Naruto had placed it under her pillow lovingly right before he was called to leave in the middle of the night, and he would have kissed her gently on the lips so as not to wake her, but here she was, nearly 24 hours later just realizing it now.

It was a lovely mid-october evening, Sakura was walking down the street, humming to herself. She loved the fall. The pleasant breeze, the changing colors in the trees which defined Konoha. It was just a peaceful time. She sauntered to the hospital, something she rarely did anymore because it seemed that every single moment of her time was preoccupied. She let her mind wander to earlier that day at lunch. She had waited for Naruto at the restaurant they had agreed to for lunch in the morning. She knew he was probably busy with something or another when he didn't show after the first half an hour, but she had waited regardless. She kept making excuses for him in her mind, and when the realization hit that he wasn't coming, her eyes began to well up with tears. She didn't quite know why. Sakura hadn't been much of a crier after she passed the age of 14. And yet, sitting there in the restaurant booth, looking across from her, she was just sad. She didn't quite understand why. There was no reason to be. He had missed lunch many times, as had she. But the sorrow was just something she couldn't deal with. It felt like a weight on her chest, and a lump in her throat. For the first time since she began working at the hospital as a doctor, Sakura took the afternoon off. She went back to their apartment, just barely holding back the tears that threatened to overflow at any time. She kept her head down because she didn't want to deal with the looks of the other people on the street. Numbly, she opened the door, closed it behind her, and sank to the floor, back to the door, and let herself cry. She couldn't quite make sense of the thoughts in her own head, except one.

"I miss him". She thought it repeatedly, and then finally when her sobs subsided, and she was getting her normal breathing patterns back, she said it aloud. "I miss him."

After that, she had gotten up, taken a shower, and decided to head back to the hospital, with every intention of talking to Naruto later that night.

Throughout her shift at the hospital, Sakura aimlessly filled out paperwork, while rehearsing the lines she wanted to say over and over in her head, perfecting them. Having a discussion with Naruto like this just seemed…. Off. He had been her other half for as long as she could remember, but talking about her feelings with him made her feel like she had regressed to her own whiny childhood self. In her mind, all she could think of was the idea that after listening to what she had to say, he would scoff at her.

"Sakura, you haven't changed at all have you?" she could hear him saying, "just as whiny and needy as ever."

Rationally, she knew that this wasn't possible. Naruto loved her. He had when she had been useless, and he had loved her as she grew into a strong independent woman. He would listen to what she had to say, and maybe he wouldn't say the exact right thing back, but he would comfort her in the way that only he was capable of.

"But what if he doesn't Sakura" the voice in her head said. "What if he is sick of it"

She absentmindedly waived the absurd thought from her mind, but she couldn't seem to get rid of the growing pit in her stomach.

A light knock on the door abruptly stopped her internal monologue.

"Sakura, its time for you to go home" the voice from the other side said. Sakura recognized it as Shizune's voice. Normally, that declaration always pleased Sakura. She loved the idea of going home to her best friend, but today the idea of it gave her sweaty palms and a fast paced heart.

"O-ok, thank you!" she replied "I'll be on my way soon!". She leaned forward in her chair, straining to hear, until she was confident the footsteps she heard walking away from her door were Shizune's.

She then leaned back in her chair and let out a really long sigh.

"What is happening to me?"


	2. Chapter 2

Sakura closed the door behind her as quietly as she could. She wasn't quite sure how to start this conversation despite hours of practicing it mentally. She left out a quiet sound of disgust at herself. This kind of mental battle was not something a strong shinobi would struggle with. It was something a younger version of herself might have done but not her now. She could literally break mountains and here she was, fearing confrontation.

"Sakura!" she heard the familiar voice which would normally relieve her worries. To her own shock, this time, she found herself a little agitated by it.

How could he act like everything was okay when she had spent an entire day agonizing? Did he not care?

"Where were you at lunch today? I was so worried!" she snapped. As soon as the words were out of her mouth she stopped for a second. She had not meant to explode on him like this at all. And yet here she was, still seething. She was mentally exhausted and yet her mind kept racing ahead of her.

"Sorry, Sakura. I got caught up with training. I ran into Lee this morning and we started racing each other, and before I realized I lost track of time and-" he began to ramble in an attempt to satiate whatever Sakura was feeling. Sakura had always had a temper, but something just felt off about this. He realized that his explanation wasn't fixing anything from the way her eyes shifted to the side instead of looking at him as he spoke. She was lost in thought, and right now, that did not seem to be a good thing.

"Did you wait long?" he prompted in hopes of getting her to communicate. He took a step towards her and brushed her hair off of her forehead. Contact was good. Contact meant that she was still there, still with him.

"No, I had a long day ahead of me." She replied faking a smile, "I just wondered where you were."

She stepped past him to avoid his gaze. Naruto always knew when Sakura was lying but she didn't have the energy to deal with his questions right now, so she found it easier to just avoid the conversation all together.

"What's for dinner?" she asked, making her way over to the dining room table. "anything good?"

Naruto narrowed his eyes at her. Something was up, but it was clear it wasn't something Sakura was willing to talk about right now. He'd get it out of her sooner or later.

"Sakura! It's always good!" he exclaimed. He bounded up next to her and threw an arm around her shoulder. "Why don't you go shower, and I'll set the table. I made something cute to make up for lunch, okay?"

Sakura felt herself relax.

She could not remember why she had been so nervous walking in. This was Naruto. Her Naruto.

She nodded and made her way to the shower. As she waited in her towel for the water to warm, she found she could not remember what had upset her so much earlier in the day. The feeling seemed so distant that she almost imagined it was a dream.

Naruto quickly set the table which he had not originally planned on doing, but his mind was on anything but the plates. 'Something is up with her.' Was the only thought that dominated his mind. He resolved that he would see if there was still something wrong in the morning. It was very possible that she just had a rough day at work. He knew how troubling the hospital could be and how difficult it could be to leave your work at work and not bring it home with you.

He lit a candle in the middle of the table and took a step back to admire his work.

As he was basking in his own excellence, Sakura stepped behind him, her wet hair brushing his back. He shivered.

"Dinner is served!" he said, grandly stepping aside and gesturing towards the elaborate set up. He briskly walked over to the seat Sakura normally sat in and pulled it out for her.

"Madam" he said. Sakura giggled and the sound eased his soul. He relaxed as he sat in his own seat.

Dinner went by in a blur of laughter and anecdotes. Sakura tactfully avoided any mention of what she did following lunch. Naruto knew better than to ask.

They washed the dishes together, Naruto smacked Sakura with a wet towel, and she responded with a punch in the arm with much more force than was necessary.

They made their way to bed. Sakura used her nightlamp to read a book about the history of cardiovascular medical jutsus and found comfort in the light snoring of the blonde man sleeping next to her.

The day was..odd to say the least.

Sakura thought it better not to dwell on something which made her feel so uneasy.

Maybe she was falling sick? She would have to look into nervousness over absolutely nothing as a symptom.

With that thought, she turned out the light, and rested her head on Naruto's back, breathing in his scent, and running her fingers down his arm until they were interlocked with his.

Days had passed since Sakura's "off-day". She hadn't told Naruto about it. She knew he would worry, and besides, it really seemed like a fluke. Since that day, she had been completely herself. She walked into surgeries with the confidence that she had worked hard to achieve. Naruto had missed another lunch, and she was unbothered by it. Her life was swept into another hectic buzz as had been the norm for the past decade or so of her life.

She hurried towards Tsunade's office, heels clicking with determination as she weaved her way in and out of crowds. There had been an overcrowding issue in their small hospital before, but nothing quite like this. Sakura's eyes scanned the crowds and saw red noses, hazy eyes, and ashy skin. It seemed as though everyone in her path seemed to be suffering from the same illness but it would be impossible to tell without a proper analysis of everyone's individual condition.

Sakura walked into Tsunade's office without knocking. She had learned long ago that the time between her making her presence known through knocking and Tsunade's actual response would be so lengthy that it would be easier to simply walk in instead. Her former sensei didn't seem to mind much.

"Shizune said you needed me." Sakura stated bluntly. She would never speak rudely to Tsunade but the hospital was in dire needs of all hands on deck and for Sakura to be called away at such a crucial time…well it had better be important.

"Take a seat, Sakura. This is of the utmost importance, I assure you." Tsunade said, looking up from the paperwork in front of her. The stacks of paper were so high that they covered her ample bosom. Despite being Hokage, Tsunade seemed to spend more time at her office in the hospital than she did at her office in the Hokage tower. Other than traditional ceremonies, sometimes even Sakura seemed to forget that Tsunade was Hokage.

Sakura duly took a seat and waited patiently.

"We have just received word from the other hospital in Konoha, they are overcrowded as well. The majors don't seem to be anything other than the common cold, but they have also reported that some cases that they had earlier last week turned out to be fatal. We can't quite tell what it is but its an epidemic and time is a commodity that we do not seem to have." Tsunade stopped. She let her words sink in.

Sakura stared blankly at Tsunade but her mind was already all over the place. She thought back to all the faces that she had seen as she had made her way to Tsundae's office. Children, parents, senior citizens, this was affecting everyone. All these people, in danger, and nothing she could think of that she could do about it.

"What are we going to do about it?" she finally croaked out.

"Well, I need your help. We need to research. We need to figure out what this is, and we need to figure out what we are going to do about it. We will start off with the most simple way to answer any question- the scientific method. I understand its ideal but it's the best we can do at this time."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I want you to go out there, assess each individual case, and make an educated guess as to what medication or treatment you wish to give them. Then I want you to administer that treatment, and we will have to see which one is the most effective. We will then take that treatment and see what other diseases we use it for. Hopefully this is just a new strain of something we already know how to fix." Tsunade explained.

Sakura stood up with determination.

"Understood." She stated as she began making her way to the door, already trying to think of the most organized way to go about this.

"And Sakura?" Tsunade said stopping her. "I want you to be in charge of the other doctors in the hospital until this passes. I am handling all the administrative work, but for any questions, I need them to report to you. I am not directly involved in this situation and because it is unprecedented, I need someone who is actually present to be calling the shots. I believe in you."

Sakura nodded.

She briskly walked out, making her way to her own office. This time, she looked closer at the people that were in her way, hoping that if she looked closely enough, the problem would jump out at her. It did not.

She sat in her black comfy chair which was already coming apart at the seams as a result of her constant picking at it and rested her head in her hand. She was not prepared for this much responsibility. This was the most terrifying job she had ever been giving, including missions. If she messed up here, innocent lives would be lost. Atleast on missions, everyone involved had voluntary signed up for the job and its possible risks. In the hospital, the only casualties were unwilling victims.

She took a deep breath and radioed out to the front desk.

"please send in my first patient, thank you."

As she waited for the patient to come in, Sakura began picking at her chair again.

She had a long day ahead of her.


	3. Chapter 3

A double shift was never much of a hindrance to Sakura's more than notable stamina before, but by the time she pulled off her latex gloves at the end of her day, Sakura felt the weight of the hundreds of questions each patient had peppered her with on her shoulders. It broke her heart to tell each set of worried eyes that she was not sure what plagued them, she didn't know how serious it was, and she wasn't sure what she could do for them other than to ease their symptoms and keep some of their blood for tests.

Each patient looked more let down than the last and by the end of her shift Sakura felt like she was about to cry. Not that she would let herself. She knew better than to start crying at the hospital. Word would spread like wild fire. And she had given herself that break a few weeks ago where she had allowed herself to cry.

No, this was not a time for tears, it was a time for action.

Sakura quickly created a mental plan for what she was going to do. She would walk home, grab a bite to eat, take a nap for a few hours, and head over to the medical library to research. There is no such thing as an illness that has never been heard of before. There are only illnesses that _you_ have never heard of before.

With that comforting thought, Sakura tightened her headband and began her walk home.

As soon as she stepped in the house, the smell of something warm hit her. It made her stomach growl and her knees weak.

"Sit on the couch, I'll bring it out to you" she heard Naruto call from the kitchen. Sakura gladly obliged.

"Did you get home early?" she called back.

"Yeah, it was getting stormy and I didn't want to act as a human conductor. Aren't you proud of me?" He walked out of the kitchen with two steaming plates of some sort of egg dish.

"Tell me about your day, you look like shit." He said putting it in front of her.

"Thanks babe" Sakura said dryly. Then she hesitated. She didn't want to worry Naruto about what was going on, but she also knew she would have to tell him because she wanted to leave in the middle of the night to go research before her second double shift the next morning. It was a fight she wasn't willing to deal with. So she took a deep breath and filled him in as fast as she could.

"Fuck." Was all he could say.

"Yeah." She said back.

They ate the rest of their meal in silence. Quietly did dishes and walked to bed.

"Sakura?" he asked as he rolled over to face her. "Don't worry, okay? If anyone can figure it out, it's you. And I promise, if I hear anything on missions, I will bring it back to you immediately, okay?" Naruto overused the word "okay" when he was worried about something because hearing her say "okay" calmed him. It was a word of affirmation which meant that she was still alright.

Sakura knew this and obliged. "okay.

But she had hesitated before she said it and Naruto had heard it and now he was more worried than ever.

He snuggled a little closer to her, dreading the moment in the middle of the night that he would not feel her warmth next him anymore.

Sakura let him, knowing that her body was comforting him more than her words could at the moment. "I can't even make _him_ feel better" the voice in her head taunted. Sakura squeezed her eyes shut and moved closer to him, willing the voice to shut up.

She had work to do and she couldn't be distracted.

Sakura awoke the next morning with her face in a book. The notebook next to her had been scribbled in with almost illegible notes and there was a stack of books surrounding her. She remembered last night. She had flipped through the books in a caffeine enhanced mania and found that she had reached a dead end. Or had she? She couldn't even remember.

Sakura looked at her notebook and realized that she would need to sit down and decipher the notes she had left for herself at some point. Maybe something in that would be helpful, but right now, she had to make her way over to the hospital. She would spend her lunch break trying to figure out her own notes.

But Sakura did not get a lunch break. She did not get a break at all actually. The hospital was twice as busy as it had been the day before as word spread that the illness going on was potentially fatal. The faces that she saw today were no longer concerned but rather terrified. The questions she got became more frantic, and the less answers she gave, the more frustrated she became.

"I swear, I want to answer your questions, I just don't have answers yet" she began saying helplessly at the end of her shift.

The frustration sat in Sakura's empty stomach and pushed outwards, making her stomach ache. She could feel it building up as she walked home. Every step she took away from work and towards her home screamed "failure" at her and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Sakura wordlessly walked into her apartment, and laid down on the couch. She heard Naruto call out to her twice or maybe three times but she just couldn't seem to create a response. Instead she gave him a curt smile and looked at him with a blank stare.

Naruto eventually gave up on trying to speak to her and gathered her up instead. He brought her to bed and brought in the food he had made for the both of them. He left her alone to eat her food in silence because although he admitted it was a little selfish, her silence was suffocating him. Sakura had been acting a little off in the smallest of ways ever since that time he missed a stupid lunch date a while ago.

Naruto wasn't known for his temper because it was something he hid rather well with his thick skin and incredible sense of humor, but being with Sakura had been a dream for so long that he hadn't expected anything in their relationship that would make it less than ideal. And yet here he was, with the woman he loved mere yards away from him, obviously distraught, and there was nothing he could do about it.

He gritted his teeth wand sat in the living room, leaning forward on the couch, his head in his hands. He could fix it if she would just talk to him! He hated the fact that she had garnered this misconception while he was away from training for those few years that emotion is equivalent with weakness. The fact that they never could get Sasuke back alive proved her point even further, and despite the fact that she loved him, he knew she would never be the kind of woman to break down to him when she needed to, and it damn near broke his heart.

Sakura on the other hand, sat propped up in her bed. The food had been haphazardly placed on her night stand. She wasn't hungry. She was….restless? manic? Nervous? She didn't even have a word for what her body was telling her she felt. She just didn't like it. This kind of emotional thinking would result in more deaths. All of her patients had 6 days until they could potentially die, and she was in her comfy bed, doing nothing. The thought had her heart racing, and her palms sweaty. She jumped out of the bed and walked over to her bag. Her breathing was getting heavier.

She frantically rustled through all the papers in her bag to find the notebook she had been writing in before. She stood in the middle of their room, staring at her notes, cursing herself for her handwriting. She remembered Ino making fun of her for it back in the academy but she never could fix it. She could never fix anything. Her handwriting, Sasuke, the patients.

Her breathing got faster and she began to grip the paper tighter as the lump in her throat grew. She kept looking and looking and looking and she could make out a few words at a time but it was taking too damn long. Time was something she did not have. Time. Is. Something. Failures. Ask. For.

In a fit of frustration she cursed and chucked the notebook across the room. The thump caught Naruto's attention who was in the room in seconds.

He walked into an empty room. He heard the shower start behind the bathroom door and saw the picked at dinner he had spent an hour on. He saw the unmade bed he worked hard on too so that the room would be clean for her when she got back from another day, and he saw the notebook she had chucked across the room. He walked over to it and gingerly picked it up.

It was a mess. Words were written in every direction. Some were written so small as to not touch another thought that she had written moments before. "How can she read this?" Naruto thought. He remembered she had written it the night before, when she was exhausted as is.

Naruto sat down at the desk she kept in their room and took out another notebook. He sat there for the next hour, deciphering Sakura's notes and putting them in his own rather girly handwriting, in proper bullet points. His eyes began to hurt, but he knew that doing this would make her life a little bit easier, and that was all the motivation he needed.

In the room next to him, the woman who prided herself on never saying no to a challenge had crumbled to the floor of the hot shower, and was covering her mouth with her hand to ensure that none of her sobs escaped. Her body shook, her shoulders hunched over, salty tears, water, snot mixed on her face and she didn't think she could remember what it felt like to be okay.

An hour later, she walked out. Pale skin glowing because of the heat, eyes a little puffy but no longer red, towel in place. She saw Naruto at their desk, pen in hand, close to dozing off.

She walked over to him and put her hand on his shoulder, and he jerked awake.

"I thought this would help" he said sheepishly, gesturing towards the work he had done.

Sakura's eyes began to tear up, but she was in front of Naruto and she would not let herself cry here. Instead she pulled him up from the chair and embraced him. She nuzzled her head into his chest and felt his body relax. His heart beat calmed her. This man had become domesticated for her sake. He was the most formidable ninja in Konoha, and he came home to clean and cook every night. She loved him.

Something she had only said to him once in their relationship. It didn't feel right to say it too much.

"Thank you" she said instead.

Naruto walked her towards their bed. He flopped backwards, taking her with him.

"You're always welcome"

She laid there, on top of him, in her towel for a while. Naruto quietly moved his arm to set an alarm for 4 am. He had to go train early because he came home late tonight. And he knew that Sakura would appreciate the early start.

All the notes he wrote meant nothing to him, but there had been some that seemed helpful. Some case studies that she had noted down that were similar.

But for tonight, they would both rest. Naruto moved up a little to turn out the night, making sure not to move the damp woman on his body. It was admittedly not the most comfortable, so he eventually did move her next to him, but as soon as he did, she snuggled up next to him again.

He went to bed with a small smile on his face.

Author Note: Hey folks! Thank you for reading. I would appreciate it if you guys could leave some reviews or something so I know whether or not this is something worth pursuing. I began writing this as a way to deal with my own anxiety, but when I started I had no idea where I would go with it. So please let me know if there is anything I can fix or even if there is anything that you like. I would also like to mention that this is a bit non-canonical if you couldn't tell already.


End file.
